We were all children on that beautiful August morning, seemingly bringing to life Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s lovely poem, “Ode to a Butterfly,” penned some 120 years ago. We were filled with mystery and delight, of magic and colorful beauty, of joy on a sunny summer morning basking in nature. 

Around us in flights as beautiful as twirling ballerinas, all basking in colors so vividly bright in contrast to the bright blue skies, our smiles of wonder and delight crossed our faces. Oranges, blacks, whites and yellows, delicately worn as the air dancers slipped above and around the prairie flora equally as beautiful. In our hands were broad and cottony nets, soft to the touch to protect our prey, beautiful butterflies flying uncharted flights.

Some 30 or us had gathered at Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge, half of us who were actual children, to roam through the hills and stately oaks, climb over granite shoulders of ancient stone and stalk through blankets of native prairie flowers in hopes of gently laying a net over our elusive prey. Monarchs. Yellow and black swallowtails. Red admirals. Cloudy sulfers. Skippers. And some most of us couldn’t identify, and some no larger than a common quarter.

Jason Frank, naturalist and head librarian of our local Ortonville Public Library, along with Grace Carruthers, environmental education intern with the Refuge this year, and Mike Cagley, retired botanist from nearby Madison, helped arrange the outing and were busy keeping detailed records of the captured butterflies, placing pinky-fingernail sized tags on the side of the wings as they were brought in often by gleeful children, their captured magic flitting about in quart-sized Mason jars with punctured lids for fresh air, jars held tightly as if holding a Genie with a lifelong wish. The three naturalists were free in offering information to all who would listen that included hope that one of their monarchs would make it thousands of miles away to the Mexico highlands bearing their tag. 

As they worked, looks of concentration replaced those profiles of previous portraits of wonder and delight, followed by a sense of joy as a tagged monarch wandered up a bare arm before suddenly magically, lifting off to resume an unscripted flight one could never in a million years attempt to chart. It wasn’t a moment for one with a stiff neck! 

Isn’t that part of the joy of butterflies? For me, a man who came with the camera instead of a net, those flights are as tantalizing as they are frustrating. Just as you’re about to hopefully capture all that colorful magic clinging to a flower it is suddenly vacant of such magic, and you wonder if those flights if ever straightened might reveal just how fast a butterfly might travel. 

Somehow skippers were clocked at 37 mph, while monarchs and swallowtails piddle along at between 5 and 12 mph. I would suggest that the clockers perhaps had about as much luck calculating such speed as I have in capturing one for a split second perched on a Blazing Star in my home-based pollinator garden. We have a black swallowtail here that makes an extremely brief appearance and has yet to allow me a single image all summer. While blessed in capturing any number of wild animals, flowers, pollinators and birds, black swallowtails and mighty moose have both forever escaped my lens!

Ah, but those flights. Perhaps it’s mundane to call them flights of fancy? Here on Listening Stones we have worked for years in creating pollinator-friendly gardens. Our first lawn “remodel” was in creating both the terrace garden along the road-facing facade of the house followed by what we called the triangle garden. Initially that was a beautiful butterfly haven with a variety of native forbs including three Prairie Smoke plants, one of my favorite of all native flowers. Over the years Cup Plants have overtaken the triangle and mostly crowded out all the others except for a couple of Babtisia plants and a handful native Milkweed that peek through. Last month a big patch of Cup was cut down beneath one of the crab apple trees, seeds deposited initially by bird droppings. This is perhaps the issue here in the small patch as well. And the butterflies? Butterflies spread joy, not seeds!

Two summers ago the Lac qui Parle SWCD office offered packages of pollinator plantings and we bought three. One for shaded areas, one for the septic mound, and the third for open sun. Our shaded plantings require a lot of work, yet the butterflies and other pollinators love the few surviving plants. Those were planted within a number of wild pinkish columbines that came with the place. 

The mound planting has struggled to survive while the open sun has exploded with summer-long beauty flush with the hum of bees and the flights of numerous butterflies, magic that seems to have blessed us. We don’t need to head to the Refuge or anywhere else, actually, to see and capture images of butterfiles. It would be nice, however, if that black swallowtail wasn’t so shy, or perhaps, sly! Yet sharing the moment with the other children on that August morning in the Refuge was a blessing I’ll long remember, and especially all those mixed facial expressions.

Once again I’ve been fortunate to have captured a bounty of beautiful butterfly images, and like the children in the Refuge, I can’t seem to have too many, or enough butterfly portraits. Perhaps the experiences allows my inner child to emerge and there is nothing wrong with that. Oh, and here is the opening stanza of Higginson’s poem that I felt so perfectly explained the moment:

Thou spark of life that wavest wings of gold,

Thou songless wanderer mid the songful birds,

With Nature’s secrets in thy tints unrolled

Through gorgeous cipher, past the reach of words,

Yet dear to every child

In glad pursuit beguiled,

Living his unspoiled days mid flowers and flocks and herds!